


The Moon is a Blind Eye

by charcoaleyes



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hints of possible Rixonne... maybe?, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 08:26:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6231403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charcoaleyes/pseuds/charcoaleyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after episode 610, and assumes there was a larger time period from Rick and Michonne sleeping together, and the attack on the Saviors.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>"I'm what?" Daryl snapped, pushing himself away from the wall and jabbing a finger at Rick, blue eyes ablaze. "The one who makes ya the bad guy? The fuckin' devil on your shoulder? That what this is?"</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Moon is a Blind Eye

**Author's Note:**

> Written because Rickyl is wonderful, but so is Richonne. And Rixonne. 
> 
> Also, I love comments.

"This is different," Rick told him, hoping Daryl would realise that he meant different from Jessie, not different from _him_. Same words as he'd used with Carl, but he doubted the reaction would be the same.

"Never said that I was sorry she died," Daryl said lowly, scuffing his boot against the porch floor. The mud on his toe left a dirty trail across the wooden slats.  
   
"I know you didn't." Daryl couldn't tell whether Rick's tone was accusatory or not.

"Sorry any of 'em died," he grunted. "Not just her. Never said a word to her. But the little kid... 's bullshit, is all."

It was just past 1am, but neither of them were particularly good sleepers, and they were both as alert as they ever were. The only noise was that of the crickets in the muggy night air, and the moonlight bore down on them; illuminating, blinding, watching.

Rick leant forward against the porch railings, his knuckles white as he held onto it tightly, and his jaw clenched. He stared at the street below, remembering the night that had been filled with so much slaughter.  
   
"I'm sorry she's dead too. Maybe not for the reasons you think, Daryl. I guess she... she reminded me of who I used to be, how I was before of all this. I failed with Lori.  _Was_  failing with her, even before the coma. With Jessie, I felt like maybe with her, I could fix some of that damage. That this time, for once, I could do things right." Rick grit his teeth. "Guess I needed to try with her first, in case I tried it with Michonne and screwed everything up. Was trying to make shit fit with Jessie and it never would have."

Daryl wouldn't meet his eyes, even less so than normal. He pursed his lips, scratching a fingernail along the railing, before leaning against the wall with a shrug.

Rick's thumb automatically smoothed against his ring finger, searching for the band that he had always rubbed when he was nervous like this, but he found nothing but bare skin. Still Daryl didn't utter a word, so Rick kept talking.  
   
"Lori didn't have a job. I'd come home from a shift and she'd put a beer into my hand, tell me that dinner would be ready soon. Didn't ask her to do all that, but she did, and that was what my life was. Being in these houses, coming home and sitting on a couch in the evening... it's the closest I've had to that since before the coma."  
   
Rick waited. Waited for a punch, or an angry outburst, or worse - a cold rejection. But Daryl stood firm, jutting his chin out defiantly.  
   
"Ain't stupid, Rick. You were married. I ain't gonna be pissed about you wantin' that, just 'cause I ain't never needed it." Daryl took a step backwards. "It's okay. I ain't never been anyone's first choice before anyway."

_Or second, or third, for that matter._

Rick reached out an arm but Daryl recoiled from him.

"No-one is a first choice, here. She's... " Rick gestured towards the front door, at their home. "She makes me feel like I used to. When I was the good guy. But you're... " He clenched his fist, pounding it against the centre of his chest.

"I'm what?" Daryl snapped, pushing himself away from the wall and jabbing a finger at Rick, blue eyes ablaze. "The one who makes ya the bad guy? The fuckin' devil on your shoulder? That what this is?"

"That's not what I meant, I... "

"Aw, the hell with this. Ain't gonna let you have your cake and eat it, Grimes."

"Daryl!"  
   
But he'd stomped off the porch, taking two steps at a time in his hurry to get away. Rick knew that Daryl would pace along the dark streets of Alexandria, going as far as he could go without leaving the protection of the town's walls, grateful that the street lamps were no longer lit. Rick knew better than to follow him. Daryl was a man who was best at working things out alone, and more than ever Rick wished that the hunter still had his crossbow, knowing that Daryl could face anything if he had that weapon slung across his back.

*

Daryl heard Michonne before he saw her. She was stealthy, a prowler like him, but his ears were quick and keen, and he could hear the soft thud of her heavy boots on the grass behind him as he made his way to the perimeter walls.  
   
He stopped and turned to face her, realising that he'd never seen her look nervous like this before.  
   
"He send ya after me?"

"No. He told me not to follow you. Said you'd be pissed."

"And ya didn't listen to him?"

Michonne raised an eyebrow and gave a _Really?_ expression.  
   
"Of course not."

Daryl hid a smile. Rick had met his match in her, alright. Serve him right, asshole.

"He sees me as an equal. You realise how important that is, even these days? You always have too, Daryl."  
   
She pressed two fingers against his forearm, her thumb grazing the inside of his wrist. He bit down at the side of his bottom lip, half-wanting to yank his arm away, half-wanting her touch to remain there. She had always been something other-worldly to him. He'd never met, let alone befriended a woman like her before, and ever since the day she had told him that jasper matched his eyes, somehow she'd seemed even more bewitching.  
   
"He's good. And strong. And he can protect all of us." She paused, cocking her head to the side and smiling with bright white teeth. "You're all of those things as well, Daryl. Don't think he doesn't know that. Don't think he's made a choice when there isn't one to make."  
   
Daryl could detect her smell - mint and the berry candle she burned in their lounge sometimes - and idly wondered if she minded picking up his scent too. Sweat and old leather and cigarette smoke.  
   
"I ain't gonna get in the way of anything," he mumbled. "He's yours, he's... "

"He _needs_ you," Michonne interrupted. "He respects you. If there's something that he needs that only I can give him, then the same can be said for you."

Daryl didn't answer.  
   
"Don't give him up. He's not going to give up _you_." She paused, looking Daryl up and down slowly. "I wouldn't ask him to. I wouldn't _want_ him to."  
   
 *  
   
Michonne had kissed Rick, then told him to go to Daryl's room instead, and now here he was, undressing and climbing into the bed beside Daryl as the archer looked over at him suspiciously, lying as far to the outside of the bed as he could possibly get. He'd pulled the sheets right up to his chin, and Rick was too anxious to even dare slide closer to him.

"You know I didn't mean that you were the bad side of me, Daryl."

Daryl stretched out in the bed a little, bridging some of the gap between he and Rick.

"Yeah? Tell me something bad you done then. Before."

"How bad?"

"Really bad."

Rick rubbed his hands together, deep in thought. He shrugged, feeling Daryl's expectant glare.

"I was a sheriff's deputy," he finally answered. "Only so bad I could be."

Daryl rolled his eyes.

"Cops can do plenty bad, I know. Maybe not you, but there must've been somethin'."

"Okay, okay. Me and Lori had been together a little while and I'd just started out. Used to go to this diner every day for lunch. They had this gorgeous little waitress, all honey blonde hair and blue eyes, like something you'd only ever see on the television. She'd wear this tasty short red uniform. God I stared at those thighs for weeks – golden arches, Shane used to call them. She bent over one day to pick up a napkin some kid dropped, and... "

"Yeah, yeah I get the fuckin' picture. Don't need to hear about you creamin' yourself over a glimpse of her panties."

Rick smiled and stared up at the ceiling as he continued.

"Knew she liked me. Would give me extra pancakes. never charged me for a cup of coffee. So one day I was coming out of the bathroom, and she was waiting for me. She kissed me, and I let her."

"You gettin turned on thinkin' about her?"  
   
"No."  
   
"So what happened? You fuck her?"  
   
"No. But Shane did."  
   
"So let me get this straight. Your story about being bad was some waitress kissing you, and you didn't fuck her behind Lori's back, and that was it?" Daryl sounded exasperated.  
   
"Yeah, but... I shouldn't have let her kiss me."  
   
"Pffft!"  
   
With a grunt, Daryl turned over onto his side, away from Rick.

"Daryl... "

The only response was Daryl's deep breathing as he fell into sleep. Rick gave a heavy sigh and contemplated getting out of bed to close the drapes, but Daryl always preferred to sleep with them open. He liked to see the night sky, said he was used to having the stars and moon to look at when he was trying to sleep, like back when he used to camp out during a hunt.

Fuck it, Daryl was asleep, or getting there, and wouldn't know if Rick got up to close them. He placed one leg out of bed when there was a gruff noise.

"Keep 'em open."

"Thought you were sleeping."

"Not with you fidgetin' beside me, fuckin' pissin' me off."

"I can't sleep," Rick complained, and Daryl tutted, flinging the sheets away from the top half of his body and motioning for Rick to move closer.

"Come on then, prick."  
   
Rick smiled, leant over, and clasped his hands behind Daryl's neck, diving in to nip at his bottom lip. Slowly, delicately. Daryl just gave a small growl and parted his mouth for a deeper kiss; tongue plunging into Rick's mouth with fervour. There was some anger there, a hint of possession as Daryl claimed Rick's lips as his own. 

"Gonna be bad, Rick?" he breathed through hungry kisses, reaching up to pull Rick's hands from around his neck, and placing them against his ass instead. "Gonna fuck me tonight since you had her last night?"

Daryl broke away from him momentarily, taking Rick's face in his hands. There was a flicker of a raised eyebrow, and Rick nodded. The moonlight streaming through the window lit up only one side of Daryl's face, turning his eyes cyan.

Daryl slid his thick fingers under the waistband of Rick's boxer shorts, edging them downwards until Rick broke away, discarding them swiftly. There was no need for him to reciprocate - Daryl slept buck naked when he wasn't on watch, and his clothes lay in a heap on the wooden floor. Rick kicked the sheets down to the bottom of the bed with his foot, pressing his mouth against Daryl's freckled shoulder. He groaned at the taste of the other man's skin and the firmness of Daryl's deltoid as he dragged his teeth across it. 

He felt Daryl's hand clamp around the back of his thigh, and Rick hitched a knee up between the hunter's legs, feeling a hard cock brush against his own. He reached down, giving the head of Daryl's dick a quick squeeze.

" _Yeah yeah yeah, like that_ ", Daryl moaned, his cheeks beginning to flush. Rick knew how difficult it was for Daryl to express enjoyment of the things they did; knew that thanks to years of abuse from his father and Merle, and the way he had been raised, that he struggled internally with the things he liked and needed, but when Rick touched him like this, Daryl gave himself up to the sensations and allowed the words he'd always kept so well hidden tumble from his lips.

"Need ya to fuck me."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Have we got anyth... "

"Nah. But I'm good, I'm good."

Rick kissed him again, full lips meeting thin. He suckled on the spot where Daryl's chin met his earlobe, and jerked his hips forward between Daryl's thighs in a desperate attempt to find some friction.

"Get off me a second will ya."

Rick raised himself onto his knees as Daryl sat up in bed, his eyes level with Rick's cock. He shook his hair away from his face before leaning forward and taking Rick into his mouth, making unholy slurping noises as he coated the other man's erection in saliva.

"Need ya wet."

Rick nodded, allowing his eyes to close and his head to fall back. It was taking everything within his power not to link his fingers around the back of Daryl's head and thrust into his mouth. Daryl's nails were scraping down the curve of his ass and his long hair was tickling the tops of Rick's thighs. Rick's eyes flicked back open and he was rewarded with the sight of Daryl's cheekbones looking even more prominent than normal as he rolled his tongue around the head of Rick's cock.

"Okay, you're going to have to stop or I'll come."

Daryl pulled away, his lips reddened and slightly swollen. His eyes narrowed and his tongue darted out wickedly to lick a bead of pre-come of the tip of the other man's hard-on. Rick took Daryl's chin in his hands, smoothing his thumb against Daryl's bottom lip, which the hunter sucked in, looking back up at the other man with darkened, lust-filled eyes. He released Rick's thumb before taking his index and middle fingers between his lips instead, and Rick emitted a moan as he felt Daryl's tongue flick wetly at them.

Daryl tugged at his dick momentarily, before giving Rick a kiss that was all clashing teeth and bitten lips, and then turned over, his fingernails digging into the cream cotton sheets as he went onto all fours. Rick marvelled at the archer's strong forearms as he bent down, his jutting ribcage tapering down into a narrow waist.  
   
Michonne was lean and hard – but Daryl was granite. Years of fighting and the barest minimum of food had carved him into something that looked sculpted. Slender hips pushing back, long toned arms spread out before him as they gripped onto the headboard. The muscles in his back rippled beneath Rick's touch.

Rick leant over the other man's back, sliding his cock in the crevice between his cheeks, and tugging at the damp curls at the nape of Daryl's neck.

"Good to go?"

"Fuckin' do it."

Daryl heard the exhale of air as Rick spat onto his fingers, and then one, two, three were inside him, pushing and stretching and stroking with delicious, infuriating slowness. Deep and pressing and too rough at times. Yeah, Rick knew what he liked, knew he needed a little pain so that he wouldn't feel so guilty about enjoying the ecstasy of what came after.

Daryl turned his head and saw how Rick's brow was furrowed as he rolled his fingers around the darkened head of his prick. Daryl was about to tell the other man to hurry the everloving shit _up_ , when Rick entered him, giving an animalistic moan as his cock breached the archer's entrance.  
   
Rick steadied himself, got them both used to the heat and the tightness. He remembered Michonne's warm, slippery, welcoming wetness, and her shy gasp of  _I can't remember the last time I..._  and then held onto Daryl's hips as he began to thrust. The hunter was a wild animal beneath him, an unbroken bronco fighting back, giving as good as he got as Rick sank into him only to be met by Daryl pushing back hungrily, over and over.  
   
Later, when they could both get it up again, Daryl knew he'd fuck Rick the way the other man liked – with Rick on his back, arching his body as Daryl slid in and out of him, hard and slow and silent. But now, they were frenzied, passionate. A snarling mess of sweat and saliva and pre-come. Daryl loved the burn of it as Rick fucked him hard, the feeling of that dull ache that was always inside him being healed.

He felt Rick's tongue slide its way across the tattoos on his back. That damn cop went crazy for those shitty demons a buddy of Merle's had given him for his 18th birthday. Rick's lips moved up and down against his scars at the same time as his hand moved up and down on Daryl's cock, and Daryl wondered if Rick had done the same to the scar on Michonne's shoulder, the only scar on her sleek, dark skin, and Rick's arm came around his waist, his thumb stroking against the head of his dick, and she'd smelt like mint and the berry candle she liked to burn, and Rick was pounding into him now and panting his name, his hand jerking Daryl off furiously and telling him to come, and she'd smelt like mint, she'd smelt like mint, she'd...  
   
"Fuck, Rick, _fuck fuck fuck_ ," Daryl almost lost his grip on the headboard as his body jolted and he exploded, shooting come all over the pillow and bedsheets.

"Did you fucking come hard for me?"

"Yeah Rick, yeah."

" _Daryl_ ," Rick gasped, losing all sense of rythym as his hips jerked erratically inside the archer. Being with Michonne had been like eating honey, like coming home, like being whole. It had been like basking in the warm sun - but this was like a storm, something untamed that he needed, because he - they - were untamed too. He reached up, clasping onto Daryl's shoulders with sweat-slicked palms as he pounded into him in time with Daryl's ragged breathing. He felt the pressure in his balls build and a pulsing in his shaft, and then he was unloading inside the writhing body beneath him.

Rick collapsed against Daryl's back as he attempted to catch his breath, but he soon felt an elbow in the ribs as Daryl tried to roll over.

"Fuckin' get off me."

Rick lay flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling, his mind racing with visions of two different faces, two different touches, two different sets of breathless moans. Daryl sat up against the headboard, brushing sweaty tendrils of dark hair from his eyes.

"I prefer you this way. The way you are now." Daryl took a cigarette from a packet, ignoring Rick's frowns as he began to smoke in bed. The sheets were creased and damp, and their still-naked bodies were sticky and sweaty.  
   
"But you didn't know me before or how I was."  
   
"Thank fuck. Sounded like a boring son of a bitch." Daryl laughed harshly, exhaling smoke and looking over at Rick in surprise as he took the cigarette from his fingers to take a drag of it himself. He made to hand it back, but Daryl shook his head, motioning for Rick to finish it. He didn't give up a smoke for just anyone, but this was Rick. He wrinkled his nose, gave a sniff, and looked down at his hands.

"You love her, then?"

"She reminds me of you."

"Not gonna answer, huh."

"I did. I said she reminds me of you."

"That's fuckin' tough luck for her, then," came Daryl's dry response, but he reached out, taking Rick's hand and threading his fingers through Rick's more slender digits.

As Rick gave his hand a squeeze, Daryl looked out at the moon and wondered if Michonne could see it too.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the I Am Kloot song of the same name.


End file.
